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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22703809">just want the devil to hate me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkingsaladshooter/pseuds/walkingsaladshooter'>walkingsaladshooter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(just as a brief mention), (not a focus of the fic), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bittersweet, Canonical Character Death, Exes, F/M, Gen, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Rebuilding, Small Towns</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:21:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22703809</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkingsaladshooter/pseuds/walkingsaladshooter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years after he killed the past, Kylo Ren returns to the town where he was only ever Ben Solo. Nothing is even remotely healed, but maybe he can start.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rey &amp; Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange, Reylo Hidden Gems</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>just want the devil to hate me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/america_oreosandkitkats/gifts">america_oreosandkitkats</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the prompt: "Ben Solo is back in town... His reputation as Kylo Ren proceeds him, so the town is wary of his return, but Rey--his ex--is not. It's one afternoon between the two of them, of returnings and healings. The softer it is, the better. Not fluffy. Soft."</p><p>Soft, but not quite sweet. I hope you enjoy!</p><p>All my thanks to crossingwinter for the beta &lt;3!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Just outside town is a strip of road that hums and glows in the summertime. It’s the edge between town and farmland, bordered by a white-painted wooden fence that nobody has bothered to repaint in at least a decade, and by beeches and buckeyes older than even his grandparents, probably. The daylilies grow wild in the ditches here, and the bees are sleepy in the sunshine and abundance of flowers, and any cars passing by are moving too fast to rubberneck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s the only place Kylo has any scrap of desire to be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For more than one reason.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He leans on the fence, one foot up on the crook of the X formed by the crossing boards, and smokes a cigarette. With his back to the road, in the flannel shirt he scrounged from his long-abandoned closet, he could be almost anyone. Almost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he sees her coming across the field, his heartbeat quickens.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t wave, even though she must see him. He appreciates that. A wave would feel forced and disingenuous and cheerful, none of which she actually is, despite what some people might think. And they’re really past pleasantries at this point, aren’t they?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s got on her beat-to-hell high-top chucks that she’s had as long as he’s known her, and a tank top and long pants, and two bottles of something swinging from one hand. Kylo swallows the lump that forms in his throat when it occurs to him she might be bringing him something cool to drink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then she’s there, the field fully crossed, standing on the other side of the fence. Rey takes off her sunglasses, squints her pretty hazel eyes at him, and says, “Hey Ben.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wordlessly, she uses her belt buckle to pop the cap off one bottle and holds it out to him. It’s cold and damp under his fingers, which he is careful not to let brush against hers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ginger beer. The good kind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels the muscle under his eye twitch; he works his jaw around the words he won’t say, his lips pressed together. Instead he nods to her as she takes a swig of her own ginger beer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Rey climbs up on the fence, swinging her long legs over to sit on the top facing the road. “So,” she says. “How’s your mom?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He finishes his cigarette and flicks the butt off into the ditch.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Ben—”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“You expect me to believe you haven’t been having Friday dinners with her every week since I left?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She raises her eyebrows. “I know how she is about everything else. How is she about you. How are the two of you? Also, don’t litter.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s a saint, I’m a monster.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shove off.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean it. She has to be a saint to let me come home after everything. And haven’t you heard?” His mouth twists in the sardonic shadow of a smile. “It’s what everyone’s saying. What a monster I am.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey takes another swig of ginger beer. Since she climbed up on the fence, she hasn’t looked right at him. “You know what your problem is?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And that—that shakes a startled bark of a laugh from Kylo. “Which of the many?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve always cared too much what people think, and you’ve always tried so hard to pretend that you don’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, no shit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s funny how good you are at fooling people.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stares at her. Her hair is coming out of her ponytail in sweat-damp wisps around her face. Her profile is as sharp and elegant as ever. All her summer freckles are out. “That makes two of us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm.” She doesn’t really need to reply. It’s old news, to them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They fall into silence, listening to the breeze stir the leaves, to the bees buzzing in the ditch, to the occasional rush of a passing car. Kylo sips his ginger beer and feels a pressure in his chest rise higher and higher into his throat. How is he so calm? Rey has always made him calm. Always centered him. Even now, when everything is a mess, he feels still and safe with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pressure rises up behind his eyes. Kylo blinks hard, swigs down the rest of his ginger beer, and climbs up over the fence. “Want to sit?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t wait for her before he crosses the grass and slumps down beneath a tree. His back to the trunk, he stretches out his long legs and closes his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a little too long before he hears Rey follow him. But she sits down next to him; when he peeks open his eyes, he sees she’s close, her shoulder not quite touching his. “How’s your mother,” she asks again. “Really.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She says she loves me.” Kylo swallows, like he can swallow down his feelings and make them disappear. “I don’t know. We aren’t talking much.” He draws up one knee, scuffing his heel across the grass and dirt. “But she’s letting me stay with her. She’s—giving me a chance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess talking will come in time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” He turns his head so he can look at her. Like up on the fence, she’s staring out away from them, not looking at him at all. “Didn’t take you long.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rey sighs. “I—” She shakes her head, lifting a hand to her mouth and biting at her fingernail. “It’s hard,” she finally says, “to imagine a world where I don’t talk to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His mouth is a hard line. “We didn’t talk for three years.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I hated it. Okay?” She doesn’t sound upset, though. Just soft. Just… tired.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pressure in his chest is back, for all he’s tried to make it leave. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, and he means it with every cell in his body, even if it sounds rough and clumsy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Rey—who is as much a mess as he is, really, just in ways that hurt her whereas his mess always ends up hurting everyone else—sighs again and leans her head against his shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They sit together quietly for a while. The breeze is warm skimming over Kylo’s face, shifting his hair. The trees around them are full of birds singing and calling. And Rey’s head is on his shoulder, a single point of pressure that makes sense in the entire world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Three years is a long time, though, and maybe he doesn’t know her quite as well as he used to. Because he doesn’t realize she’s crying until he hears how thick her voice is when she asks, “Was any of it worth it? Any of it at all?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kylo knows he’s going to be in love with Rey for the rest of his life. There’s no other way for him. So the need to gather her up in his arms, to kiss her forehead, to whisper that he loves her and she’s good and she deserves everything, is so overwhelming he can hardly breathe through it. But he doesn’t get to do those things anymore. So instead, he scoots his hand over next to hers on the grass, turning it behind hers, and gently rubs his thumb against her wrist.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” he says. “But you already knew that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I needed to hear you say it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He understands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not a monster,” she adds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hm. Tell that to the rest of town.” He’s loathe to stop stroking his thumb against her wrist, not when she’s letting him keep doing it, so he lifts his other hand and sticks up fingers as he lists his failings. “I fell out with my parents, who are pillars of the community, and so I fell to sin.” That earns him a snort from her, not quite a laugh but close enough. “I went to work for a megacorporation bent on monopolizing.” In their town that runs on mom-and-pop shops, such a thing was tantamount to treason. “I became a full-blown alcoholic.” Not actually uncommon in their town, but shameful when exposed to the light of day; and it had happened because he hated his life but couldn’t come back here, not when he’d all but disowned his parents and broken up with the love of his life. “And I didn’t come home for my father’s funeral.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kylo sucks in a sharp breath. His four fingers sticking up go blurry in his vision. He has to really blink hard to fight it back this time. He clears his throat once, twice, and lets his hand fall. “So. You know. Plenty monstrous.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whatever.” There’s that hard edge in her voice now that he’s always loved. That spark of determination, the beginnings of righteous anger. That it’s on his behalf again, after everything, is bewildering. “You came back, didn’t you? You could have ended up any of a dozen other worse places. But you didn’t. You came back. You’re with your mother. You’re</span>
  <em>
    <span> here </span>
  </em>
  <span>and you’re sober and you’re trying. If anyone can’t let it go, it’s their problem.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His thumb stills against her wrist. “You,” Kylo says slowly, “are the single most gracious human on the planet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh come</span>
  <em>
    <span> off it,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Ben.” Rey whirls around and blazes at him, eyes bright and fierce. “I’m angry at you. Of course I’m angry at you. But I also know you. And there’s no version of my life where I don’t love you. I’m angry and I’m—I’m fucking sad, okay, but you don’t deserve to be treated like shit.” And she deflates a little, slouching down against the trunk of the tree, biting her nails and glaring out towards the road. “You treat yourself like shit enough.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And if Kylo stays sitting here he’s going to do something profoundly stupid. He’s going to take her in his arms or burst into tears or ask her for a second chance. So he gets up and paces away, then turns back before he goes too far so she’ll know he’s not leaving, just—pacing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he does. Pace. Mostly with his back to her, sometimes wandering kind of far out into the field, because he is crying, actually, and while he’d let himself share his tears with Rey when they were together, they’re not together anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the rush of emotion in his chest is less of a roaring wave and more of the relentless-but-dull streaming of a river, Kylo shoves his hands in his jeans pockets and walks back over to the tree.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Judging by the red tipping Rey’s nose and shadowing the edges of her eyes, she’s been crying, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kylo doesn’t sit next to her again. He lies down instead, stretching across the grass on his stomach, his head turned to the side and pillowed on his arms. He leaves a couple feet between his arms and Rey’s hip. The sun falls across his legs, and the warmth feels solid and good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This time, when they’re silent, they both let the silence breathe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kylo thinks he dozes, after a time. Because when he feels her fingers in his hair, it’s from far away at first. He takes in a sharp little breath and blinks his eyelids against his sleeve. Rey cards her fingers through his hair, and he sighs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You let it get long,” she says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mm.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It hides your ears.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s better that way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Be kinder to yourself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kylo nuzzles his cheek against his arm. “Why did you ask to meet me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She keeps stroking his hair in a steady, even rhythm. He can imagine the look on her face. A little crease between her eyebrows, even though her eyes are soft. The hint of a frown. Not a sad one, but a thinking one. He knows the way her hair is framing her face, how her freckles make her look sweet and fresh. “Because I miss you,” she says, plainly, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And hell, it is, really. Strip away everything else, and that’s been the purest truth of the past three years. “Yeah.” His voice is low. “Thank you, Rey.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She makes a soft noise and just keeps petting his hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kylo is a lot of things, but hopeful isn’t one of them. He has no expectations of her, or of their relationship. But they’re both here. They’re both here, and her fingers are in his hair, and the summer is warm and glowing and full of flowers and bees, and Kylo hasn’t had a drink in a month, and two days ago he finally visited his father’s grave. And even if his own mother can barely speak to him, Rey can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His eyes closed, he feels the sunlight on his legs, the grass scratching against his forearms, the gentle pressure of Rey’s fingers in his hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a start.</span>
</p>
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